Torrenting

I'm not sure how you deduced that. Someone who successfully phishes is actually directly taking money from another person. You missed the point; it wasn't about the technicality of stealing, it was about the actual net result of the act.

In my case, I said I torrent stuff that I would never otherwise pay for. The last thing I torrented was the utterly dreadful Escape Room 2. If torrenting didn't exist, I would never pay for it, in any format, and would be quite happy never watching it.

Therefore the injured party, whilst technically a victim of "crime" has not suffered any loss whatsoever.

Other people do take money from studio pockets, by torrenting in lieu of paying, be it digital, cinema, physical, whatever. I never suggested otherwise.

But in most cases people torrent stuff because they can, but will still prefer to watch most things either via sub, cinema, TV, whatever.

In my case I go to the cinema very regularly, I do have valid subs, and I also buy physical blu-rays of a lot of movies I had to intially torrent to be able to see, because I do believe in supporting things.

95% of what I torrent is stuff that I would never have paid for in the first place, that I'd happily go without if the option wasn't there. The other 5% is typically stuff that simply isn't legally available via any means in Ireland.

EG I previously mentioned Posessor Uncut. I had to torrent that because it was only available on Amazon Prime via VPN.....in a censored version. So I torrented the unrated version, and subsequently bought the unrated Blu-Ray. It will never be taken out of the packaging.

I still torrent the odd thing, but I get most my entertainment from Netflix, Prime, Crunchyroll and Spotify. If I can't get it on any of them, I'm likely to torrent. But I notice there's definitely a helluva lot more people doing illegal streams. I don't know how, even the best quality illegal stream is not good enough for me. Torrenting gives you the best possible picture (but it may take a few downloads to confirm the good one, but thankfully there are still plenty of trusted uploaders). I'm probably going to cancel Prime as I haven't even opened it in months, but it's cheap at a fiver I think. And Crunchyroll may be merged into PS+ soon so will be one less sub (albeit the PS+ will probably increase in price).

But I find torrenting is only good for relatively recent stuff, or extremely popular older stuff. I've been trying to find the best legal way to watch all 4 seasons of Spartacus again, but it's just not available over here, and I've been unable to find a decent stream or torrent. The complete series on Bluray is only about €20 now, so that's now an option too.

Paying however much for Disney and then on their streaming service they release a "premium film" for an additional 30 quid? that's a torrenting.

Don't get the complaint about Disney on this one. The premium film is for new releases put on the platform instead of being released in cinema as they were closed due to Covid.

Cost was €21.99 not €30 and if a family of 4 for example wanted to go to cinema to see it then they would have spent considerably more so it was not a bad deal.

Ah yes. torrenting is so much easier for millions of people than Amazon Prime's complicated interface.

Anyhow the point about having multiiple apps/platforms is valid.

I wonder if there'll every be one app that gives access to all on one platform would be very useful.

I haven’t Torrented in years either, partly from a lazy assumption that ISPs would block the traffic. I also don’t like the idea of my IP address being visible to authorities who could trace it through my ISP if they wanted to. From the way it sounds, neither of those concerns are really justified, so I may just dip a toe in again.

I would torrent considerably less if the Irish catalogues on a lot of streaming services didn't lack so many shows or films. In some cases a platform will have season 3/4 of a show but not season 1 and 2.

ya.. I guess it's the laziness thing... I can just tell Alexa to "play XYZ" and it starts playing on my Firestick instantly... vs having to turn on my computer... log onto the torrent site.. search for the file... choose a reliable source ... start downloading... etc etc

Greater barrier to entry vs just sitting back on my couch and shouting out a sentence.

The monthly cost doesn't bother me either, as I pay using my spare phone credit (which is paid for by the company)

ah I only used uTorrent ... what software is that, and more importantly can Alexa use it? 😄

We have a subscription for Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Sky. If I can't find a movie/show on those, i'll often try Rakuten or Youtube but I still often find myself having to torrent. The way I see it is, if I can't get it legitmately the fault for me downloading it illegally falls on the studios etc. who haven't made the show/movie available to me.

Can't recommend Hulu enough and will be deleting Disney+ and probably Netflix too in place for it.

I dont want to get this thread locked but ebooks are the easiest thing in the world if you look into doing it with torrentings grandfather, IRC. Literally entire libraries of every book ever written there for the taking, it has literally never let me down and I have thousands of ebooks, if its been released its there.

KOBOs and Kindles are a great tool aswell, Id be bankrupt without them the way I chew through books, here's my current one, the Kobo Forma, my all time fav gadget: